Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
Happy Halloween, dear Imps!

I don’t have a picture book for you all today, because I want to take a moment to share a bit of news I just learned. (I’m slow, and you all may already know this!) It wasn’t till I was goofing around on Instagram yesterday that I learned that illustrator Matthew Forsythe designed the upcoming new short film from Aardman (coming to Netflix in November). Robin Robin is what Forsythe describes as a holiday musical (directed by Dan Ojari and Michael Please). If you head to Forsythe’s page at Instagram, you can see some of his design work (in a few of his more recent posts). One of those images is pictured above.

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If you missed it last week, please be sure to take a look at the new documentary about diversity in children’s literature from the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, “Tell Me Another Story.” It’s 30 minutes, and it’s free.

Here is more information about it at their site.

 
Over at BookPage, I’ve got a review of Naaz Khan’s Room for Everyone (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, November 2021), illustrated by Mercè López.

That review is here, and below are some spreads.

Enjoy!

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(Click cover to enlarge)

 

I love to read the thoughts of professor and poetry advocate Sylvia Vardell, and today at the Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott she writes about a picture book I’ve yet to cover here at 7-Imp. So I’m sending you to Sylvia’s post.

Sylvia takes a deep dive here into Joyce Sidman’s delightful Dear Treefrog, illustrated by Diana Sudyka. Enjoy!

(P.S. Here’s where to get caught up on all the other picture book posts over there.)

 
I’ve a review over at BookPage of Anne Wynter’s spectacular debut picture book, Everybody in the Red Brick Building (Balzer + Bray, October 2021), illustrated by Oge Mora.

You can read that here, and below are some of Mora’s dynamic spreads.

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Over at the Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott today, we take a look at the impact that illustrator Jerry Pinkney has had on the legacy of the Caldecott Award.

Head here to read more.

Over at the Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott, we pay tribute to the one, the only Jerry Pinkney, who died yesterday at the age of 81.

Head here for more, and please come share your own memories.

Photo taken in 2015 at the National Museum of Wildlife Art.

“Hello! I’m just looking.
There’s nothing wrong with just looking …”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
I absolutely cannot read Helen Yoon’s very entertaining Off-Limits (Candlewick, November 2021) without thinking of Patricia Lee Gauch’s lecture, “The Picture Book as an Act of Mischief” (which you can read here at the Horn Book). “In a picture book, mischief is a badge of honor,” Gauch said. “Mischief affects everything in a book.”

Mischief. Controlled chaos. That’s what we have here, not to mention a story that will utterly please a particular kind of person — that is, people who looooove office supplies. (You know who you are.)

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“At first, we can see Grandpa’s footprints in the snow, but before long, the wind blows them away. All the same, we can follow the words he’s lost in the snow.
Grandma can see them now, too.”
(Click to enlarge and see spread in its entirety)

 
“My grandfather’s name is Kaj, and my grandmother’s name is Gerda. I go to see them a lot.” Thus opens Betina Birkjærs Coffee, Rabbit, Snowdrop, Lost (Enchanted Lion), illustrated by Anna Margrethe Kjærgaard and translated by Sinéad Quirke Køngerskov. This Danish import, originally published in 2019 and coming to U.S. shelves in December, tells a tenderly crafted (and seamlessly translated) story about dementia as if affects an intergenerational relationship.

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“… amber eyes”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
You all remember Kate Gardner’s Lovely Beasts: The Surprising Truth (2018), illustrated by Heidi Smith. Right? (It even won Heidi the 2019 Bull-Bransom Award from the National Museum of Wildlife Art.) Gardner is back with a book about foxes and, delightfully, it is filled with photography. How to Find A Fox (Running Press Kids, September 2021) features photographs by wildlife photographer Ossi Saarinen, and it is one of this year’s best picture books.

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